Research – clinical trials

• See current acute leukaemia trials

Research into new ways of treating leukaemia is going on all the time.

When a new treatment is being developed it goes through various stages of research. To begin with it will be looked at in the laboratory, and sometimes tested on cancer cells in a test tube. If the treatment seems as though it might be useful in treating cancer, it is then given to patients in research studies (clinical trials). As a first step, these aim to find a safe dose, see what side effects the therapy may cause, and identify which cancers it might be used to treat. These early studies are known as phase 1 trials.

If early studies suggest that a new treatment may be both safe and effective, further trials (phases 2 and 3) are done to find out whether it is better than existing treatments, or offers extra benefit when given together with existing treatments, and to compare the new treatment with the current best standard treatments.

Clinical trials are very necessary for working out how useful any possible new treatment might be and seeing whether it is better than existing treatments. Because this must be done carefully and thoroughly, it usually takes some years from the time when a new treatment is first discovered (often with a lot of publicity in the papers and on TV) until the time when its true value is established.

You may be asked to take part in a trial. There can be many benefits in doing this. You will be helping to improve knowledge about cancer and the development of new treatments and you will be carefully monitored during and after the study.

It is important to bear in mind that some treatments that look promising at first are often later found not to be as good as existing treatments, or to have side effects that outweigh any benefits.

You may be asked by your doctors for permission to store some of the samples of your blood or bone marrow, so that they can be used in research to find the causes of cancer.

The treatments that are now used for ALL have been developed over the past 30–40 years by using clinical trials. Each trial can help to improve the treatment and cure rates for ALL. Since treatments can probably be improved even further some trials are currently being carried out in the UK.

One trial, called UKALL XII, aims to see whether a donor transplant, an autologous transplant or standard-dose chemotherapy are better treatments for people under the age of 56 with ALL. It is also aiming to find out whether imatinib (Glivec) is a helpful treatment for people with Philadelphia chromosome-positive ALL.

CancerBACUP has a section on clinical research trials if you would like more information.